Offers a progress report on the state of the post-Communist revolution, ten years on, in Central Europe, concluding that the transition to democracy and markets for these countries has been bumpier and longer than might have been expected 10 years ago. Early chapters concentrate on the overall transition process in the region, and later chapters deal with specific cases. Subjects include economics of mass media, the information society model, the Czech experience in educational change, and women's employment in Poland. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The authors of the International Style Library turn their attention to the land east of the Danube as they travel through Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and the surrounding countryside to find in the architecture, interiors, and folk arts of the region a host of thriving design traditions accessible again after a long isolation.Full-color photographs.
How do we interpret the recent changes in world politics and what is the future likely to hold? The contributors to this volume share an assumption that history repeats itself. The book places the events of the past few years in broad historical context, examining how the political, military and economic arrangements of the past are reflected in current events. By tracing historical patterns in Western Europe, Russia, East Asia, Latin America and the United States, the contributors aim to provide a new perspective on the pressing questions and conflicts that characterize international politics now and in the years to come.
Stanley Kubrick was arguably one of the most influential American directors of the post-World War II era, and his Central European Jewish heritage, though often overlooked, greatly influenced his oeuvre. Kubrick's Mitteleuropa explores this influence in ways that range from his work with Hungarian and Polish composers Bela Bartok, György Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki to the visual inspiration of artists such as Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and other central European Modernists. Beyond exploring the Mitteleuropa sensibility in Kubrick's films, the contributions in this volume also provide important commentary on the reception of his films in countries across Eastern Europe.
First study of cinema, media and the Balkan wars; Wide-ranging view of politics and culture of the region; The break-up of Yugoslavia triggered a truly international film-making project. Underground, Ulysses' Gaze, Before the Rain, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame and Welcome to Sarajevo were amongst a host of films created as the conflicts in the region unravelled. These conflicts restored the Balkans as a centrepiece of Western imagery and the media (especially cinema) assumed a leading but ambiguous role in defining it for global consumption through a narrow range of selectively defined images. Simultaneously, a lot of the high-quality cinematic and television work made in the region (much of it discussed in this book) remains relatively unknown. Cinema of Flames attempts to go deeper than the imagery and address some of the general concerns of the cross-cultural representation and self-representation of the Balkans: narrative strategies within the context of Balkan exclusion from the European cultural sphere, the cosmopolitan image of Sarejevo, diaspora, and the representations of villains, victims, women, and ethnic minorities, all considered in the general context of Balkan cinema. 'encyclopaedic in scope and brilliance, making excellent use of the scholarly literature whilst interweaving analysis of films and other mass media. The book will be a superb addition to the literatures on Bosnia and Yugoslavia. It will also serve as a standard reference on Balkans film.' Robert Hayden (University of Pittsburgh)
A Historical Geography of Europe provides an analytical and explanatory account of European historical geography from classical times to the modern period, including the vast changes to landscape, settlements, population, and in political and cultural structures and character that have taken place since 1500. The text takes account of the volume of relevant research and literature that has been published over the past two or three decades, in order to achieve a coverage and synthesis of this very broad range of evidence and opinion, and has tried to engage with many of the main themes and debates to give a clear indication of changing ideas and interpretations of the subject.
More than 30 years after their momentous book "Projekt Mitteleuropa", which had been written before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Emil Brix and Erhard Busek revisit the political space between Germany, Russia and the Mediterranean. The volume explores the role of Central Europe in the 21st century, the importance of the European Union, the significance of a transforming Central Europe for European unity, and what happens when we marginalise Central Europe. The view of the authors is unequivocal: European integration will only succeed when the Central European countries from Poland to North Macedonia, from the Czech Republic to Romania and Moldova, will be seen as being at the heart of Europe. The European Union needs to build more common and fair ground between "old" and "new" member states. According to the authors, any further move towards a "Europe of two speeds" would lead to a break-up of the EU.
Books begin as ideas. The suggestion for this one came from my mentor and friend, Hajo Holborn of Yale University. To him I am indebted for a series of challenging and rewarding experiences in the study of history. This work started as a routine dissertation on a limited subject, developed into a rejection of several generally accepted notions about German history, and finally opened out upon some broader perspectives of the modern Western world. In pursuing my topic I have tried to remain consistent and true to a fundamental conviction: that ideas cannot be dissociated from the men and situations that give birth to them, or from the changing characteristics of later men and later situations that use or affect the earlier ideological heritage. Politics by slogan is an aspect of man's activity that has its obvious, serious defects. These imperfections become more menacing when they are enshrined as history by slogan in the service of whatever cause. To counteract this tendency I have tried to tie the ideas of mid European integration clearly to specific persons or situations at every stage of development. Without such anchorage ideas will billow into slogans or evaporate into loose generalizations.
